If a turntable company has succeeded in making several versions of a turntable, essentially with different drives, while at the same time keeping the platter pad and platter signatures exactly the same, I would agree that the differences one heard in them could be ascribed to the drive.
However- the drives themselves require that the platter design be different! Thus I severely doubt that *any* company has demonstrated this successfully.
In working with the Empire into its evolution into our model 208, we found that the platter pad affected the sound, but if you did nothing to control the resonance of the platter itself, you were missing a bet. IOW, although the pad I've been working with is head and shoulders better than anything else I have seen, it still did not control the platter; damping the platter was still a major improvement.
BTW, the platter pad in question was designed and built by Warren Gehl (currently at ARC) about 20 years ago. It was used by SOTA on the first 50 to 75 Cosmos tables, at which time the formula got modified. So an early Cosmos would have some of the same advantages, if you could fix the drive. I use this pad on my personal table only.
I find it astonishing that platter pads have received little or no attention in the last 2 decades, despite the extreme importance they play in controlling vinyl resonance caused by the needle tracking the groove. Resonance control otherwise has been one of the biggest strides in turntable technology over the years- but almost no work on the place where it counts the most.
And for the record, if the mat is too soft, like a rubber mat, dynamics will be suppressed. The interface has to be exact- the pad has to be the same hardness as the vinyl, so that no energy is reflected back to the LP, yet the mat has to immediately absorb the energy. Acrylic mats are too hard, rubber and felt way too soft. Honestly if these things are not sorted out first its almost impossible to tell anything else about the table! My advice is to try it first before you knock it. The only problem is- where do you get a proper mat and for that I have no answer- there isn't one anymore as far as I can tell. That is how bad this situation is- the platter pad is one of the most audible artifacts of a turntable excluding the arm and cartridge, and there are no definitive pads even available.
Warren saw to it that a good number of serious audiophiles in the Twin Cities area had his pad (FWIW he spent about 5 years perfecting it- I personally had about 5 or 6 earlier versions before he got it right). So we have had ample opportunity to compare it on the SP-10, SL1100, Conneseur, Rekokut (idler drive), Empire, SOTA, and the like. FWIW, a salesman at one of the local shops figured out how to install the pad on a vacuum SOTA, which resulted in his getting a job with SOTA. That person was Allen Perkins, and is why the early Cosmos tables featured that pad.
However- the drives themselves require that the platter design be different! Thus I severely doubt that *any* company has demonstrated this successfully.
In working with the Empire into its evolution into our model 208, we found that the platter pad affected the sound, but if you did nothing to control the resonance of the platter itself, you were missing a bet. IOW, although the pad I've been working with is head and shoulders better than anything else I have seen, it still did not control the platter; damping the platter was still a major improvement.
BTW, the platter pad in question was designed and built by Warren Gehl (currently at ARC) about 20 years ago. It was used by SOTA on the first 50 to 75 Cosmos tables, at which time the formula got modified. So an early Cosmos would have some of the same advantages, if you could fix the drive. I use this pad on my personal table only.
I find it astonishing that platter pads have received little or no attention in the last 2 decades, despite the extreme importance they play in controlling vinyl resonance caused by the needle tracking the groove. Resonance control otherwise has been one of the biggest strides in turntable technology over the years- but almost no work on the place where it counts the most.
And for the record, if the mat is too soft, like a rubber mat, dynamics will be suppressed. The interface has to be exact- the pad has to be the same hardness as the vinyl, so that no energy is reflected back to the LP, yet the mat has to immediately absorb the energy. Acrylic mats are too hard, rubber and felt way too soft. Honestly if these things are not sorted out first its almost impossible to tell anything else about the table! My advice is to try it first before you knock it. The only problem is- where do you get a proper mat and for that I have no answer- there isn't one anymore as far as I can tell. That is how bad this situation is- the platter pad is one of the most audible artifacts of a turntable excluding the arm and cartridge, and there are no definitive pads even available.
Warren saw to it that a good number of serious audiophiles in the Twin Cities area had his pad (FWIW he spent about 5 years perfecting it- I personally had about 5 or 6 earlier versions before he got it right). So we have had ample opportunity to compare it on the SP-10, SL1100, Conneseur, Rekokut (idler drive), Empire, SOTA, and the like. FWIW, a salesman at one of the local shops figured out how to install the pad on a vacuum SOTA, which resulted in his getting a job with SOTA. That person was Allen Perkins, and is why the early Cosmos tables featured that pad.